In the Boone home on the Yadkin, we may guess that the talk was
solely of the hunt, unless young Daniel had already become
possessed of his first compass and was studying its ways. On such
an evening, while the red afterglow lingered, he might be mending
a passing trader's firearms by the fires of the primitive forge
his father had set up near the trading path running from
Hillsborough to the Catawba towns. It was said by the local
nimrods that none could doctor a sick rifle better than young
Daniel Boone, already the master huntsman of them all. And
perhaps some trader's tale, told when the caravan halted for the
night, kindled the youth's first desire to penetrate the
mountain-guarded wilderness, for the tales of these Romanies of
commerce were as the very badge of their free-masonry, and entry
money at the doors of strangers.
Out on the border's edge, heedless of the shadow of the mountains
looming between the newly built cabin and that western land where
they and their kind were to write the fame of the Ulster Scot in
a shining script that time cannot dull, there might sit a group
of stern-faced men, all deep in discussion of some point of
spiritual doctrine or of the temporal rights of men. Yet, in
every cabin, whatever the national differences, the setting was
the same The spirit of the frontier was modeling out of old clay
a new Adam to answer the needs of a new earth.
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